Yeah yeah, I know either one would be considered "Futuristic" I just couldn't think of a better thread title.

So I was thinking this afternoon about the Season 3 Autobots, particularly Kup, Springer, Arcee and Blurr and wondered if their vehicle mode designs were supposed to be their Cybertronian forms or if they were supposedly futuristic earth vehicles. Hot Rod looks more like an earth vehicle than the others IMO. I'm going to go with Cybertronian forms personally, but I just wanted to hear what you all thought.

I always kind of thought Hot Rod was a earth vehicle, while the others were probably Cybertronian. I guess it's because Hot Rod and Daniel were chums, he may have picked a favorite local vehicle form, since it doesn't look as alien.

The others, since Robots In Disguise is kind of a null term 20 years after they started tromping around on Earth, just kind of kept what they had.

In the G1 universe where we had 8 billion major technological advancements between '85 and '05, and a few more by 2010, vehicles like those didn't seem very out of place. I'd say the -weirder- ones were folks like Bumblebee still turning into an 80s VW.

Then again, it also makes sense that the disguise thing was less important to the Autobots, since they were apparently a recognized group by the Earth governments.

Probably their Cybertronian forms because they weren't on the Ark originally to get reformatted. Remember, G1 TFs didn't pick their alt modes, Teletran-1 did. Of course, the Season 2 TFs weren't on the Ark either and they had Earth forms. So, who knows.

A major problem with visuals in Season 3 was lack of continuity and consistency. You either had super futuristic 1980s scifi or you had the Earth looking more or less like 1985. Remember the futuristic human city Trypicon was built out of, and the town full of hicks near Metroplex?

one thing that could aid this discussion is the government agency the human "fairborn" works for has worked with the transformers to develop earths space program and prepare earths millitary for the decepticons (though spinner cars blatantly are dumb bolts)

A major problem with visuals in Season 3 was lack of continuity and consistency. You either had super futuristic 1980s scifi or you had the Earth looking more or less like 1985. Remember the futuristic human city Trypicon was built out of, and the town full of hicks near Metroplex?

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The plan to begin eliminating hicks from the American populace probably wasn't going to be initated until mid-2011, hence the presence of hicks near metroplex.

I always thought they had Cybertronian forms, with the obvious exception of Hot Rod. When they slipped past the autobots moonbase...wait, you mean that there is a base on the moon? Don't you think the people of earth would know about the existence of that? plus Autobot ships coming and going. I seriously doubt that Earthlings were still unaware of Transformers. That's why I don't think that they were some kind of hybrid forms either. Straight up Cybertronian forms.

I think of them as some hybrid of Cybertronian and advanced Earth technology. Cybertron by this point having shared enough with Earth to make things like that more possible.

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It would make sense that the Autobots shared a lot of tech with humanity, since Earth is a lot more space-faring in TF 2005 than RL 2005. As for the vehicle modes, I assume the idea was the Movie Autobots were what the 1985 designers thought normal cars would look like in 2005, sorta kinda but not really supported by Kup having a different Cybertronian vehicle mode in thw WW comic, but the Cybertron/Earth hybrid theaory works for me. Ones like Hot Rod and Arcee seem to have a little more in common with Earth cars, and Kup and Blurr remind me more of the Cybertronian-based vehicle modes.

I say both as well. At the time I thought it very cool that we were seeing vehicles from the future and actual Cybertronian based toys. That was part of what was cool about the movie characters. The novelty kind of wore off with the Headmasters and beyond though.

I thought they were Cybertronian forms. They resembled the designs of some other TFs on Cybertron in the cartoon, and in the comics there was no mention of them (Kup, Blurr, and Hot Rod) changing there alternate modes to blend in on Nebulon after they left Cybertron with Fort Max.